Gratitude
by MangoPirate
Summary: CP9's only female member reflects on her childhood friendship and discovers that she might have meant more than she realized.


**Author's note: **Wow, I'm churning out fics left and right lately! I've just been overly inspired and had some actual free time on my hands, so I'm getting to write like I used to. I wrote this one at around 1:00 am, so I'm not sure how it's going to sound... but there should be more CP9 fanfic on here, so I posted it. :3

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_Gratitude_

She supposed she'd known him for her entire life, because she could remember as far back as sitting in adjoining cribs at a babysitter's house, throwing things at him while he stared his unblinking gaze out the window at the birds in the trees. She used to cry because he ignored her, but she realized that if she pulled the cat's tail he'd yell at her, and at least that was some kind of recognition. He yelled at her over the cat until they were both old enough to go to school, where she learned his favorite color was red and his daddy was somebody big and important like hers.

His daddy was also of the wealthy variety, apparently, because he got everything he ever asked for--including all kinds of pets, from an iguana to a ferret to all kinds of birds. She used to walk home with him after school, and sometimes, if he was feeling particularly kind, he'd wordlessly hold the door open for her to follow him inside, into the room full of cages and perches and feathers everywhere. She would marvel at the bright plumage and graceful curving necks of the creatures, watching them preen themselves majestically.

He played favorites with his pets, and so one by one they died off, ran away, or were sold by his father. He actually gave her one--a baby chameleon--but she was not nearly as gifted with animalas as he was, and she never told him exactly what happened to it. She was happy to have kept it as long as she did, though.

As they got older, they began to notice some changes. Their parents sent them both to a private training school at the age of ten, and they never went home again. She was content to learn the very difficult material presented at the school, but he still liked to stare out windows and spend endless hours in his room, alone, with no one but his one remaning pet to comfort him. She tried to talk to him, but with each year he became more and more distant, until he regarded her with nothing more than a cold stare on his way off to do his duty.

The way the other boys looked at her was something between reverence, fear, and lust, with a generous helping of the final ingredient. She walked to her training classes every day amidst wolf-whistles and blushing attempts to ask her on dates, all beginning before she had even become a teenager. It was, in fact, her thirteenth birthday when she was heading back from class and ran into her childhood friend, kneeling in a dark walkway between two buildings, shuddering in silent pain.

She glanced around to be sure no one saw her, then snuck into the walkway with him, kneeling at his side. He snarled at her to leave him alone, but somewhere beneath all her training she still remembered him as a child who loved animals, and she had to stay with him. After a while, he began to struggle to take off his jacket, and so she helped him, forcing herself not to gasp at the bloodied and mangled mess that was his back. He made no sound, only continued to shudder as she gingerly, timidly, stroked his long hair. After some time, he leaned heavily against her, allowing her to see an extremely rare moment of human weakness in him. She never witnessed such a thing again, and never betrayed the one time she did.

She never asked him about his injury, and even when she joined him in the hot springs--she would never have gone with anyone else, but she had always trusted him and his quiet lack of concern for her femininity--she did not question the scars that he still bore from the unspoken incident. In turn, he never said much of anything to her; one day, however, after barely weaseling her way out of a plethora of innuendos and annoying comments, she slid into the water opposite him and he looked her squarely in the eyes.

"What?" she asked coolly. "I'm not going to go to dinner with you either, if that's what you want."

He frowned, shaking the hair back away from his face. "...No," he said presently, still holding eye contact with her.

She sighed, splashed a bit of water at him, and said, "Well hurry up and spit it out. You have a frightening gaze."

He only narrowed his eyes more at that, and she shook her head. Finally, he said, "Sorry."

"No you're not. Just tell me what you wanted to say. You weren't really going to ask me to dinner, were you?"

"No," he repeated, not the least bit irritated at her for asking again. "I was thinking of something."

She leaned her head back to rest in the water of the hot spring, happy that he was not the type of man to even notice her floating there just within reach. She spoke to the air as she said, "I'm not going to be here all day."

He reached out and grabbed her hand, and she was so startled that she almost sunk beneath the water in an attempt to sit up. Her moves were sluggish at best, so submerged in the debilitating water, and she could do nothing to pull out of his grip. His fierce stare and his tight fingers on hers were enough to give her more than a little fear, and although she still trusted him, she couldn't quite shake the feeling that he could overpower her easily.

But he only continued to stare at her, holding her hand so tightly beneath the water. Finally, just as she was about to take some kind of drastic measure, he spoke again. "You've always been kind to me," he said softly. "I just wanted to thank you for that."

He bent near her and kissed her cheek brusquely before climbing out of the hot springs, shaking the water from his hands and feet, catlike, one at a time, and leaving her alone. She did not move to light her fingers over the place where his lips had touched her skin, and she did not watch him wrap up in a towel and walk, scowling, away. She simply sat, floating, relaxed, and wondered what had brought about the sudden display, and why she had not retorted.

With a deep, heaving sigh, she spoke to no one. "You're welcome, Lucci," she said quietly.

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**As always, read and review, and flames will be used for nuking my horrible dial-up Internet connection. :3**


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